South Hadley man reportedly behind questionable campaign websites

SOUTH HADLEY — A South Hadley man was recently the focus of a network news report that charges he has set up two look-alike Web pages that claim to be the official Internet sites of the Republican and Democratic national committees and that he is accepting campaign donations from an unsuspecting public.

The report, which aired nationally on Friday, stops short of accusing Peltier of breaking the law by misleading Republican and Democratic donors who think they are giving money to the national committees behind Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. But Ross does call the practice questionable and describes Peltier as “an oil delivery driver by day and an Internet sleight-of-hand artist by night.”

View full sizeA screen capture from the site www.RepublicanNationalCommittee.org invites supporters to make donations by credit card. The site looks as if it is affiliated with the Republican National Committee but it has no ties to the national committee and has been called a scam site.

Peltier worked as driver for Fuel Services Inc. of South Hadley, but he was apparently fired on Monday morning due to the publicity resulting from the national telecast, according to WWLP TV22.

Peltier could not be reached for comment.

The Republican left a message at a phone number for Peltier but received no reply. A second number had been disconnected.

In the wake of the ABC story, the supposed Republican Party link remains active, but the link for the questionable Democratic Party site automatically sends you to another link called www.StupidRoss.org

That site takes Ross to task for sloppy, deceitful, lazy journalism and for being too dumb to recognize what it called a political parody website. “Being the intellect he is, Brian Ross is unable to recognize humor,” the site notes.

It also accuses him of trespassing on private property when Ross walked onto Peltier's property in an attempt to interview him on Aug. 23.

In Ross’ original story on ABC, Peltier drove his vehicle to the rear of his property and called police when he spotted Ross and a camera crew. The police came to the scene but found no wrongdoing because the newsman and his crew were at that time standing on a public sidewalk.

The official website of the Republican National Committee is www.GOP.com

Ross, in his report, notes that in the days following the respective party conventions, would-be donors flocked to the Internet set on sending a few bucks to the two main parties prior to the November election. And some of them undoubtedly made their way to the questionable South Hadley sites.

How much money was collected is unknown, but Ross reports that Peltier acknowledged he plans to keep the money that he has received.

Jason Tait, of the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance, said because the two sites claim to represent the national political parties, he said the issue would be outside the scope of the state agency. He recommended checking with the Federal Election Commission.

The FEC allows the formation of political committees that are not affiliated with a particular candidate or party, but these nonconnected committees that collect more than $1,000 in a calendar year are required to file collection and expenditure reports with the FEC. It is not clear if that had been done in this case.

The two questionable sites certainly look like the real thing, with photos, news articles and position statements of two respective candidates. The only clue that something may be amiss is found in the very fine print at the bottom of the page, where it says “This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”

However, that same language is found in the fine print of the two official Republican and Democratic national committee sites. The legitimate sites have something the two doppleganger sites are missing, namely contact information directing people to a telephone number and mail and email addresses for the national parties.

Federal law requires any political organizations seeking donations which are affiliated with any candidate or party to “state clearly the name and permanent street address, telephone number or World Wide Web address” of the committee or person responsible.

In a 2010 ruling, the FEC fined a Texas woman $41,000 and ordered her to return all donations after she set up a committee for accepting campaign donations with the implication that the money was being solicited on behalf of the Republican National Committee.